Over about the past 20 years or so, it has become increasingly common to treat diseased and injured bone joints by implanting prosthetic joints. The prostheses for joints involving the long bones, such as the femur, tibia, humerus, radius and ulna often have stem portions that extend some distance into the medullary canals of the bone shafts. Not infrequently, a person with a joint prosthesis sustains a fracture in a portion of the bone that wholly or partly overlies the prosthetic component or is closely adjacent to it.
The conventional treatment of such fractures involves immobilization of the joint while the fracture heals. If the fracture overlies the prosthesis, the prosthesis will usually be replaced. The replacement of the prosthesis and the immobilization of the joint are both detrimental to the patient, in that a revision prosthesis is often not as successful as the original one, and immobilization of the joint slows the healing process and can cause permanently reduced function and even loss of function. At the very least immobilization of the joint greatly increases the time and effort required for rehabilitation.